Edit: This is old. Check out our update for 2018 here.
High Quality Infographic Download
Update
Mewtwo was released overnight in Yokohama as predicted! It is a single catch special edition. As such, you can not use Mewtwo to fight Mewtwo yet. Mewtwo will be released to the rest of the world via exclusive raid passes. Make sure to fight raids in lots of different gyms!
Mewtwo Rebalance
I was working very hard on the new personalized rankings for Pokebattler when I received an urgent message. Mewtwo’s stats had just been changed in the Game Master file! The base stats had dropped from 330 attack, 200 defense and 212 stamina down to 300 attack, 182 defense and 193 stamina. This was a huge nerf which is a good thing! Mewtwo with the old stats was completely overpowered compared to the rest of the available pokemon and would immediately unbalance the game. In addition, it would have been a rediculously hard raid boss and incredibly tough for the average mixed group to beat. Sure the users of this site would not have had issues beating mewtwo but your average player using Zen Headbutt/Dazzling Gleam Blissey against Mewtwo would sure have a rough time
Mewtwo Raid Guide
Mewtwo is a tough Raid pokemon with only 2 real weaknesses, like Alakazam but with much higher defense and even higher attack. He has 2 different quick attacks, Psycho Cut and Confusion.
- Psycho Cut is great on offense but terrible on defense due to it being a very fast attack.
- Confusion on the other hand is awesome on defense while still being good on attack if a bit slow.
- You can tell the difference between the two by how quickly the attacks are coming out and how big a chunk of your life is going away with each hit.
- Big slow attacks is Confusion, smaller faster attacks is Psycho Cut.
Mewtwo is also equipped with 4 different moves, 3 of which are top tier on both offense and defense while the last gets a STAB damage bonus saving it from being total garbage
- Focus Blast is the first of the strong specials and arguably the strongest due to it covering Mewtwo’s biggest weakness: Tyranitar. It is a Full bar, 140 power fighting move and will hit like a truck on both offense and defense. Fighting moves are very strong in the current meta as seen with Machamp’s dominance of tier 4 raids and Focus Blast is an awesome fighting move.
- Shadow Ball is the next of the strong specials and type aside is arguably the strongest special move in the game. This is a 2 bar, 100 power Ghost move, great against water and psychic pokemon. This kind of power is typically seen on bad single bar moves but seeing it on a 2 bar move is incredible
- Hyper Beam is the last of the strong specials and is a nice well rounded special. It is a single bar 150 power Normal move. Rarely going to be the best counter against something but will rarely be a bad choice. This makes it great for clearing gyms!
- Psychic is the last of the specials. It is not a particularly awe inspiring special move as a single bar 100 power move. Its awesome against Muk and Vaporeon but i don’t think anyone really cares. This move is particularly bad on defense as Tyranitar will shrug it off due to his small brain size.
Best Counters
Tyranitar
Tyranitar is by far the strongest counter against Mewtwo. He shrugs off Psychic attacks and has extremely strong Dark attacks at his disposal. If your Tyranitar has Stone Edge from fighting birds, don’t worry, the only thing better than a Bite/Stone Edge Tyranitar is a Bite/Crunch Tyranitar so you are in good hands. If for some reason you have any other moveset for Tyranitar, thats ok too! Even the worst Iron Tail/Fire Blast Tyranitar is as good as the 6th counter on the list. That said you should TM away that Iron Tail as fast as you can because its terrible and Fire blast is almost as bad. Leave your fire moves to Moltres, Flareon and Arcanine where they belong. Now on the chance that Mewtwo is carrying Focus Blast you really should try to dodge as it will hit you very hard. You are still doing ok though as even with Focus Blast, Tyranitar is still the #5 counter. But if you know ahead of time that you are facing Focus Blast, you really want to be using the #2 best counter which is…
Mewtwo
Ok I lied. There is one thing in between the 2 best Tyranitars above and thats a Mewtwo with Shadow Ball. Remember how I said Shadow Ball is the best move in the game? And its great against psychic? Guess what Mewtwo is? A psychic pokemon! So use your psychic pokemon against a psychic pokemon and you will do great! Umm wait a second what happens if the defending Mewtwo has shadow ball too? Well you will get your shadow balls off first and you are still only #3 but yes it will hurt. Use your Tyranitars instead if you have the choice
Good Counters
Houndoom
Baby Tyranitar puts in quite a showing against Mewtwo, reliably showing near the top of the counters list. Dark moves are what you are looking for although a fire quick move isn’t the end of the world. If you are swimming in quick tms like I am, swap that to dark/dark as there are better fire pokemon out there but this is the #2 dark pokemon
Lugia
Lugia finally has a use! Focus Blast Mewtwo in particular is quite vulnerable to Lugia. You want Sky Attack for a special along with any quick attack and use it. Finally a reason to power up Lugia. Wait a minute scratch that. Save your power ups for Mewtwo. A much better psychic pokemon. Leave Lugia alone until defense actually matters
Snorlax
It’s been a long time since Snorlax showed up in any charts. Hes a very tanky option, and deals a lot of damage before he dies thanks to that excellent Lick Ghost move. Don’t have lick? Keep Snorlax in a gym so it won’t be auto selected or TM him! Snorlax is particularly good against Shadowball Mewtwo but does reasonably well against all of them
Scizor
Scizor is the best bug attack user and has no issues vs. hyper beam and does ok against all forms of Mewtwo except focus blast.
Dragonite
Good old dragonite with Outrage is a good general counter and you probably have a high level one to use which is even better. Its no Tyranitar but still makes the list of good counters
Other Counters
Gyarados
Gyarados with double dark move is of course going to do quite good damage. It is particularly good against focus blast so keep that in mind if you have a high level one from back when high cp defenders were a thing
Pinsir
Pinsir does particularly good against Shadow Ball Mewtwo if he can survive long enough to get off his specials. I wouldnt power him up but if you have a decent one and are hurting for a slot, you can put him in
Blissey
I struggled hard on this one. I really wanted to keep Blissey off the chart. Its a very particular situation against Shadowball Mewtwo and you have to have pound/hyper beam. Blissey will stay alive forever(almost 70 seconds!). And will do only 10% less damage than Tyranitar and 2% less than Snorlax. Next best is Umbreon who is so far behind its not even funny.
Glass Cannon
Gengar
Gengar is a very special case glass cannon who you only want to use if you are in a hurry (or very short on people). It is theoretically possible to duo a Psycho Cut/Focus Blast Mewtwo with Gengar with a bit of luck if you each have 12 of them. Its going to be quite difficult though. There is one other funny thing about Gengar in this situation. If Gengar can survive 3 Confusions, Gengar will do a large amount of damage. If 3 Confusions kills Gengar, Gengar will be absolutely terrible. This means you need to have a high enough level, defense and stamina combination to survive 3 confusions. This means you need to be level 32, with 15 defense and 15 stamina or level 37 with 10 defense and 10 stamina to survive long enough. The exact breakpoint will depend upon your exact situation, I will update this article with the breakpoint later.
How does Arcanine with Snarl/Crunch rate as a mewtwo counter?
Bad against focus blast, pretty decent against other movesets. Top 10 often It looks like crunch gives the boss too much energy and Arcanine melts
Cause there dark type moves
Thanks for the great article and especially the infographics.
Two questsions:
1) “This is a 2 bar, 100 power Ghost move, great against water and psychic pokemon.”
> Isn’t Ghost SE against Ghost and Psychic only? Why water?
2) “Its awesome against Muk and Vaporeon but i don’t think anyone really cares.”
> Isn’t Psychic SE against Fighting and Poison only? Why Vaporeon (Water)?
Because most water counters are not high cp. This is a neutral damage high power move from a 4k cp pokémon. It is as good as a zapdos and depending on exact level and stats of the pokémon involved, a little worse or better than a solar beam user.
“And will do only 10% less damage than Tyranitar and 2% less than Snorlax.”
Is this per Pokemon lifetime? For instance, Blissey will cause 10% less damage over 70 seconds than Tyranitar over (say) 30 seconds?
Per 6 pokemon and yes it’s a lot slower than Tyranitar. Dps wise it’s not as bad as people think
Can you explain how a Blissey, with 2 non-supereffective moves and 129 ATK stat, would ever do near as much damage as a Tyrannitar with 1 or 2 supereffective moves and literally 2x (251) ATK stat? Blissey has less ATK than Bellsprout so he’s likely doing nothing. Over the pokemon’s lifespan in battle, I can’t see Blissey lasting that much longer because Tyrannitar also resists all Mewtwo’s moves but Focus Blast.
Because Blissey is double resistant to shadow ball. It takes twice as long as Tyranitar but still a respectable 19% of total mewtwo health if you have 6 of them. Shadow ball hits so hard most pokémon will die quick
MaxCP at Lvl 20 is 2275, not 2235
Will fix when the wife gets up
-like Alakazam but with much higher defense
Before the nerf he had 6 more DEF than Alakazam and now it is lower
You mentioned Bite/Crunch Tyrannitar is the best counter but don’t have that moveset listed for him in the graphic
Pinsir will be better than Scizor because he’s got more ATK and DEF and is resistant to Focus Blast, and both will be much better for DPS than Houndoom, Snorlax and Lugia, the latter of which have under 200 ATK. I’d even go so far as to ask you don’t recommend those last 3 as DPS in general is more important than tanking, but people still bring Snorlax and Blissey anyways.
I mean defense in the generic lives a long time sense due to defense and stamina combined. I should clarify though.
The infographic definitely shows dark dark as the best Tyranitar moveset. The rankings are based on actual simulations. Pinsir and Scizor do not survive as long as Houndoom and do not get as many specials off.
The rating I am using is 50% time to win and 50% survivability. You will be surprised how quickly some of these die. Like Golem vs. Articuno. Snorlax and Blissey are slow but do almost as much damage as Tyranitar, just in a longer time frame. All 3 do around 20% of Mewtwo life just different speeds
I highly recommend you use the Raid tool to investigate different levels. You can zoom all the way into the individual simulation and see what is going on.
Thanks for your work on this article and Graphics. Have you thought about adding the breakpoints of moves as bite and crunch assuming 15 attack iv in the Graphics?
It’s too much for 1 infographic. I might make an article though
Why wouldn’t you use Umbreon? Given Dark type and high HP?
Very low attack stat, lower than Blissey.
Ok, yes fair point.
Yes, Umbreon does have lower attack, but it’s only by 3. It more than compensates with its STAB and super effective. It has high defense to survive and bring damage.
How about a dark Granbull
Bug / Bug Scyther does not show up in the raid guide vs FocusBlast. When you run the battle it is about the same as bug/bug Scizor and better than many others that get ranked.
Is this a bug Celandro? ( pun intended)
Sort of. I was not including any evolved pokémon. I have been convinced to add scyther to attackers and chansey to defenders for various reasons. This will roll out over time.
I suspect most won’t have a good stat high level unvolved scyther though
I have a 100% IV Scyther with FC/XS. I don’t have the metal coat to evolve him and probably won’t get it before my EX raid tomorrow. I have lots of candy and stardust tho, and could max him out very easily (and still have enough for the eventual evolve). Would it be worth doing that? I’m lvl 31 and not the greatest player and am looking at my 6th option for my team, unless I get another TTar before I go.
You will be happy to see that Bug/Bug Scyther is in the new guide!
cool but how can i find him in japan ??
So did you also publish this on the Otakuart click bait site or have they just stolen half your words and give you zero credit?
Stolen. I only cross publish as a comment in reddit posts.
I do not mind original research based off my site but copy paste is annoying
I really love this site. Thanks for all your hard work. First of all, Is there anywhere that we can donate to this cause?. Secondly I am wondering how hard it would we to implement an average score against a raid boss against all movesets?
So if I raid a Mewtwo with two Gyrados one has two dark moves and one has one dark with hydro. Two Tyranatars one with both dark moves one with a dark attack and fireblast. And a heracross with both sting bug type attacks and Lugia with two strong physic moves would that work?
How about Absols? They are readily available dark mon at the moment.
How does an Exeggutor work against Mewtwo?
Also incineroar will be good because he will get so powerful